The present relates to a navigation system with a route designating device.
Navigation systems are known, in which position informations and movement informations are supplied to a route designation device. Furthermore, the route designation device utilizes map informations which are available from a map storage. Problems arise when in particular in the cases of long covered distances, the position informations are no longer precise, so that the deviations of the determined position from the actual position occur. Position systems for this purpose use additional informations. For example by a comparison of the map information with the position information, a correction of the position information is provided.
Accordingly, it is an object of present invention to provide a navigation system of the above mentioned general type, which is a further improvement of the existing systems.
In keeping with these objects and with others which will become apparent hereinafter, one feature of present invention resides, briefly stated, in a navigation system in which an image producing device is provided, which produces an image of an environment of the navigation system, and the route suggestion device takes in the consideration the image of the image producing device.
When the navigation system is designed in accordance with the present invention, then due to the evaluation of the additional information, an improvement of the navigation or the route suggestion is possible. For this purpose the image information of the environment, for example optical information is provided for the navigation system.
In accordance with a further feature of the present invention, simple utilization of the information is provided, in that distinctive objects in the environment of the navigation system are recognized. Also, the relative position of the navigation system or the position of the navigation system relative to the distinctive object can be utilized. The thusly recognized objects can be compared with the map information, so that the identification of the distinctive object is facilitated.
In addition, naturally also position informations can be considered, which in some cases are corrected by the image informations. Furthermore, the image informations can be joined with the information of the movement sensors. For image generation, preferably a video camera and/or an infrared camera and/or a radar antenna can be utilized.
The novel features which are considered as characteristic for the present invention are set forth in particular in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, both as to its construction and its method of operation, together with additional objects and advantages thereof, will be best understood from the following description of specific embodiments when read in connection with the accompanying drawings.